A handout photo taken on March 19, 2014 shows Royal Australian Air Force pilot Flight Lieutenant Russell Adams from 10 Squadron, flying his AP-3C Orion over the Southern Indian Ocean during the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Two objects possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been sighted in the southern Indian Ocean, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a potential breakthrough on March 20, 2014.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Search planes flying out of Australia on Friday began a difficult hunt through rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth for objects that may be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

In what one official called the “best lead” of the nearly 2-week-old aviation mystery, a satellite detected two large objects floating about 1,400 miles southwest of the Australian coast about halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic.

DigitalGlobe, a Longmont-based company, said it provided the images to Australian officials. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority released two images of the whitish objects. One was 80 feet long which is longer than a standard shipping container. They were taken March 16, but Australian Air Commodore John McGarry said it took time to analyze them.

The area in the southern Indian Ocean is so remote is takes aircraft longer to fly there — four hours — than it allows for the search.

The discovery raised new hope of finding the vanished jet and sent another emotional jolt to the families of the 239 people aboard.

A search Thursday with four planes in cloud and rain found nothing. Australian authorities said Friday efforts had resumed at dawn with five planes.

Warren Truss, Australia’s acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that weather conditions in the search area were poor and may get worse.

Speaking at a news conference in Papua New Guinea, Abbott said, “We’ve been throwing everything we’ve got at that area to try to learn more about what this debris might be.”

Abbott spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he described as “devastated.” Of the 227 passengers on the missing flight, 154 were from China.

The Norwegian cargo vessel Hoegh St. Petersburg, with a Filipino crew of 20, arrived in the area and used lights to search overnight before resuming a visual search Friday, said Ingar Skiaker of Hoegh Autoliners, said in Oslo.

There have been several false leads since the Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 above the Gulf of Thailand en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
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1,500

Miles off the Australian coast that two object were spotted13,000 Square miles of ocean being scoured by crews to search for the missing plane